Motorola today provided more details on plans to upgrade its smartphones and tablets to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

The company has already started rolling out ICS to the Wi-Fi version of the Motorola Xoom tablet, but next on the upgrade path for U.S. customers is the Motorola Xoom Family Edition, which should start in the second quarter, though no specific dates were provided.

Other U.S. devices, however, won't get the Ice Cream Sandwich treatment until the third quarter, including the Atrix 2, the Atrix 4G, the Photon 4G, as well as the Wi-Fi Motorola Xyboard 8.2 and 10.1 tablets.

"We know how excited you've been about getting the next stage of Ice Cream Sandwich updates for your Motorola devices," Motorola said in a blog post. "Our engineers and designers are combing through the code and preparing it for you."

Yesterday, meanwhile, there were reports that Motorola will unveil its first Ice Cream Sandwich-based smartphone at Mobile World Congress later this month - and it will run Intel's new ultra low-power Atom chip.

Earlier this week, mobile ad network Chitika found that the latest version of Google's mobile OS is still only available on 1.12 percent of Android-based gadgets. The most popular version of Android remains Gingerbread at 66.29 percent, followed by Froyo at 22.33 percent, and Eclair at 5.39 percent.

The low numbers for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich shouldn't be entirely shocking. At this point, the mobile OS is only available on a handful of smartphones and tablets, like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Asus Transformer Prime, and the Xoom. Other manufacturers have promised ICS upgrades for their devices, but that will happen on a staggered basis throughout 2012, as demonstrated by Motorola's plans.

Last month, former Windows Phone exec Charles Kindel said Google has lost control of Android thanks to fragmentation, but predicted the OS will continue to thrive for many years to come. Kindel's comments came one week after Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt appeared at the Consumer Electronics Show and argued that Android is not fragmented but "differentiated," which Kindel said was pure spin.

Chloe Albanesius has been with PCMag.com since April 2007, most recently as Executive Editor for News and Features. Prior to that, she worked for a year covering financial IT on Wall Street for Incisive Media. From 2002 to 2005, Chloe covered technology policy for The National Journal's Technology Daily in Washington, DC. She has held internships at NBC's Meet the Press, washingtonpost.com, the Tate Gallery press office in London, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from American University...
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